* When he was young and light-hearted T.C.W. Blanning wrote a short
book, Joseph II and Enlightened Despotism. Only one sentence, he proudly
proclaims, is common to that book and to the book published now. Even in
1970 Blanning did not really like Joseph II. With the enthusiasm of
youth he gave him credit for his `aversion to etiquette, privilege and
snobbery' and conceded that the title of 'revolutionary
emperor' was deserved if only because of the emperor's dislike
of the nobility and his policies in favour of the peasantry. They were,
after all, the most numerous class, and the greatest good of the
greatest number was the yardstick by which Joseph II measured merit, and
so did Blanning at that time. it was possible to admire Joseph II,
Blanning concluded, but not to like him.

Twenty-four years later, Blanning likes Joseph even less and
expresses admiration only with great difficulty. Heir to a mosaic of
lands, languages, religions, traditions, social and political
structures, united only in the person of the ruler -- king here,
archduke there -- Joseph saw virtue only in a unified, uniform state.
'Everything exists for the state' he wrote in 1763. `This word
contains everything, so all who live in it should come together to
promote its interests'. Providence had made all men equal, he
argued, and all must contribute to the general good in proportion to
their property, ability, and the benefit they derived from the
community.

Joseph's assault on Habsburg traditions developed along two
lines: the imposition of uniformity, and a strictly utilitarian
approach. He rode roughshod over all vested interests, property, rank,
human feelings, religious beliefs and practices, thoughts and
principles. He was the most dictatorial of absolute rulers in great
things and small, banning the wearing of corsets by pregnant women,
urging physical exercise in the armed forces to combat `onanism'.

Those policies which might have earned him the approval of posterity,
such as the assault on the Catholic church and baroque Catholicism, or
religious toleration and education, were limited, and, in the case of
education, philistine. Even his peasant policy served to maintain
Austrian agriculture in a state of backwardness. The death penalty was
abolished and replaced by a most inhumane and deadly form of forced
labour. Joseph's foreign policy was a failure too; he allowed
himself to be manipulated and overreached by his great rival, Catherine
II of Russia.

Insofar as Joseph was an `enlightened' monarch, he belongs more
to the species of the terribles simplificateurs like Robespierre or St
Just (who prohibited the use of German in Alsace in the interests of the
unitary state) than to the school of Montesquieu, though in the double
portrait, of 1769, with his brother Leopold L'Esprit des Lois lies
on the table. Joseph did not believe in the separation of the executive
from the legislative.

His reign was ultimately a failure and his life both a public and a
private tragedy. His much-loved wife preferred his sister's company
and died of smallpox three years after their marriage. But at least he
was spared the disaster which he nearly brought on himself by his
insistence on marrying his deceased wife's sister, Maria Luisa of
Parma, whose witchlike face can be seen staring out from Goya's
portraits of the family of Charles IV of Spain.

Blanning draws on all the work which has been published in the last
twenty years, and also on his own researches in Austrian archives. His
quotations from the letterbooks of the emperor's correspondence
with his servants provide fascinating highlights on Joseph's
complex and abrasive personality. As usual with Blanning this book is
written with gusto, insight and incisive wit. It is not only scholarly
but enjoyable.

Joseph II was not, however, according to Blanning the warmonger he
was often taken to be at the time, owing very largely, it must be said,
to his own tactlessness. He plays a major role in Jeremy Black's
account of British foreign policy over a period of ten years. Black
covers in great detail, almost day by day, its twists' turns and
meanderings, noting the opinions of individuals and the processes by
which decisions were, in the fullness of time, reached, meting out
praise or rebuking `foolishness', whether British or foreign, as
required, and drawing attention to the extraordinary influence exercised
by a small number of quite outstanding ambassadors, such as Harris
(Malmesbury), Elliott, Ewart and Eden (Auckland).

The organisation of the book leads to a good deal of repetition,
which could have been pruned, thus leaving space for a bibliography,
which has been omitted and which in a work of this kind is absolutely
essential. The author has drawn very largely on archival evidence, but
there is also a solid array of printed sources. The book reads a little
like a thesis in which the author does not dare to leave anything out.

Interesting as much of the detail is, it is very difficult to obtain
a general view of British foreign policy when one's eyes are glued
to the page. Moreover, Dr Black's style is very uneven and
sometimes a sentence has to be read several times in order to grasp his
meaning. There is a good deal of `on the one hand' and `on the
other', without any final conclusion.

The assumptions on which British foreign policy was based in the
early part of the period were backward and conservative, and the
rhetoric in which they were clothed reads very quaintly to the modern
mind. Britain was still fighting the last war. France was the `natural
enemy', the `restless' and `ambitious' power whose
machinations must be countered at every turn, and whose unnatural'
alliance with Austria must be broken if possible. This was not only the
view of the Pittites but of many Whigs also. Charles james Fox went
further and was prepared to sacrifice England's maritime principles
for the sake of an alliance with Russia and, in his case, Prussia.
(Black makes no mention of this question so vital to Anglo-Russian
relations). Throughout the decade, British ministers longed for the
resurrection of the `old alliance' with Austria which had served
them so well in the War of the Spanish Succession.

But nowhere does Black, or the statesmen he quotes, ever analyse the
motives of the great powers on the mainland in strategic terms. The
military considerations which had led to the diplomatic revolution of
1756 still applied. Britain could only be useful to the German powers as
an ally against France, because France was vulnerable at sea. in a
struggle against each other Austria and Prussia needed the help of
armies, not navies.

The period was unmarked by any very great crises in Western Europe,
the area of most concern to Great Britain. The French revolution was
viewed at first with indifference, indeed almost welcomed since it
destroyed French influence in Europe. France was too weak to intervene
in Holland in 1787, and to support Spain over Nootka Sound in 1790. She
had ceased to be a desirable ally by the end of the decade. Upheavals in
eastern Europe seem, on the whole, to have affected Britain less
directly, until the quite artificial crisis created partly by Prussia
and very largely by Pitt over Ochakov in 1790-1.

Black argues that neither Britain nor France now sought territorial
gains in Europe, while clearly the three great eastern powers did, as
well as some of the minor ones. Hence Britain's essentially
defensive policy and her insistence on the status quo ante bellum in her
efforts to end the second Russo-Turkish war -- or, in other words,
Pitt's so-called federative system' of collective security for
smaller powers. Yet Britain was prepared to accept the cession of Danzig
and Thorn to Prussia, to demand more specific legal recognition of the
rights she claimed in the Pacific from Spain, and clearly she applied
different standards in India and in Europe.

It is in his last two chapters that Black at last integrates British
foreign policy into the wider background, both domestic and
international, and it is here that Professor Schroeder takes over from
him, not chronologically but conceptually. To begin with, he is writing
not about foreign policy but about what he calls 'international
politics'. Not for him the pointilliste approach, he goes for the
wide horizon and the broad brushstroke. Just as Black's book
carries on where the recent volume by H.M., Scott, British Foreign
Policy in the Age of the American Revolution leaves off, so Schroeder,
after a rather larger time gap, carries on where A.J.P. Taylor once left
off his masterly yet often perverse The Struggle for Mastery in Europe
some forty years ago.

But Schroeder has a theory: he conceives of the subject in terms of
the `superiority of system-level explanations and structural analysis
over unit-level explanations of international politics'. `It is
vital also to show', he adds, 'how systematic rules and
structural limits influenced and shaped these outcomes'. Those who
are not very well up in the system theories of international relations
may have a certain sympathy with Jeremy Black, who, in his last chapter,
is critical of any systemic approach on the grounds that it fails to do
justice to the chaos which prevailed in the application of balance of
theories of power or national interest.

Schroeder's definition of an 'international system'
follows the Oakeshottian concept of 'the constituent rules of a
practice or a civic association', namely, the assumptions on which
people operate within a shared framework. He argues that a sea change
came over these assumptions in the years 1813-15, when the competitive
and conflicting balance of power policies of the eighteenth century gave
way to concepts of concert and political equilibrium. This did not occur
as a result of twenty-eight years of war, but as a consequence of a
change in mentalities.

Thus Schroeder gives a new and positive interpretation to the concept
of the 'concert' of Europe, and rejects the traditional
interpretation of the Holy Alliance as merely a Russian attempt at
European hegemony. He re-examines many of the minor negotiations on
frontiers and annexations, seeing where they in fact served to maintain
a harmonious balance rather than to exacerbate tensions in the period he
covers.

Though their interests did not always coincide, the military hegemony
of Russia and the naval hegemony of Britain combined to maintain not a
balance of power, but a new attitude to problem-solving. Indeed, many
pages in this book read as though the author had shaken up a
kaleidoscope and allowed the pieces to fall in a totally new, at times
startling, at times refreshing, at times unconvincing pattern.

There are indeed some generalizations which fail to convince, notably
that in the 1780s Europe was heading inevitably towards war, which was
'systemic and structural'. it is difficult, however, to accept
the theory that war was inevitable because of the rigidities of the
balance of power at the time (1787-91) when so many powers climbed down
in order not to push international conflicts to extremes (France in
Holland, 1787; Spain in the Pacific, 1790; Leopold at Reichenbach, 1790;
Britain at Ochakov, 1791) while revolutionary France precipitated war by
systematically disregarding treaties and established conventions (even
on the repatriation of prisoners), i.e. all those assumptions which made
up the 'civic association' of Europe.

The wars of the French revolution were surely not the outcome of the
balance of power system of the eighteenth century, but of its total
overthrow, from the moment France proclaimed the freedom of navigation
of the Scheldt in the name of natural right and in disregard of
treaties.

COPYRIGHT 1996 History Today Ltd.
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.